"Doesn't seem to hurt Court very much," declared Charlie. "He nearly talked an arm off of me and Furman Hatch this morning,—and it certainly seemed to be a real pleasure for him to cuss. I really think he'll get well quicker if you drop in for a chat with him, Mr. Blythe."
"It would be very nice," said Alix warmly, "if you could run in for a few minutes—"
"Sure I will," cried the young man. "This afternoon, Mr. Webster,—about half-past two?"
"Any time suits me," said the obliging Mr. Webster. As if struck by something irresistibly funny, he suddenly put his hand to his mouth and got very red in the face. After an illy-suppressed snort or two, he coughed violently, and then stammered: "Excuse me. I was just thinking about—er—about something funny. I'm always doing some fool thing like that. This was about Ed Jones's dog,—wouldn't be the least bit funny to anybody but me, so I won't tell you about it. Two-thirty it is, then? I'll meet you up at Alix's. It's only a step."
"Will you tell Mr. Thane that you are bringing Mr. Blythe to see him this afternoon, Charlie?" said Alix. "You said he was threatening to disobey the doctor's—"
"You leave it to me, Alix," broke in Charlie reassuringly. "Trust me to see that he don't escape."
A little before two-thirty, tall Mr. Blythe, one time Captain in the Field Artillery, and short Mr. Webster wended their way through the once busy stableyard in the rear of Dowd's Tavern. Charlie gave his companion a brief history of the Tavern and indicated certain venerable and venerated objects of interest,—such as the ancient log watering-trough (hewn in 1832); the rain-barrels, ash-hoppers and fodder cribs (dating back to Civil War days), the huge kettle suspended from a thick iron bar the ends of which were supported by rusty standards, where apple-butter was made at one season of the year, lye at another, and where lard was rendered at butchering-time. He took him into the wagon-shed and showed him the rickety high-wheeled, top-heavy carriage used by the first of the Dowds back in the forties, now ready to fall to pieces at the slightest ungentle shake; the once gaudy sleigh with its great curved "runners"; and over in a dark corner two long barrelled rifles with rusty locks and rotten stocks, that once upon a time cracked the doom of deer and wolf and fox, of catamount and squirrel and coon, of wild turkeys and geese and ducks—to say nothing of an occasional horsethief.
"They say old man Dowd could shoot the eye out of a squirrel three hundreds yards away with one of these rifles," announced Charlie; "and it was no trick at all for him to nip a wild turkey's head off at five hundred yards. I'll bet you didn't run up against any such shooting as that over in France."
Blythe shook his head. "No such rifle shooting, I grant you. But what would you say to a German cannon twelve miles away landing ten shells in succession on a battery half as big as this stable without even being able to see the thing they were shooting at?"
"I give up," said Charlie gloomily. "Old man Dowd was SOME liar, but, my gosh, he couldn't hold a—well, my respect for the American Army is greater than it ever was, I'll say that, Captain. Dan Dowd was the rankest kind of an amateur."